Saturday, December 31, 2011

The Brothers' War - Chapter 19

A monk kneels before Gix, ready to report. It's not a verbal report but a telepathic one. Gix reaches out and grabs the top of the man's skull to poke through his mind.

"The demon would be loath to admit it, but he found the experience unlike any at home in Phyrexia. Delicious. That was the word for it. The touch of the monk's nerves was delicious.

The emotions subsided - fear, anger, passion, concern, bliss - and Gix began to scan the monk's mind. The monks prided themselves on their machinelike organization, but Gix found their minds a tangle of clutter, a jungle of conflicting thoughts more impenetrable than his homeland's jungles. Slowly Gix extended his own consciousness, taming the wilderness and pulling the answers he needed from the living skull of his worshiper.

Through these reports he'd learned that this world is like a land of children running around without any masters. There was an old race, the Thran, that may have filled that role, but they are long gone. Instead this is a land of barbarians, some of which are commanded by a man named Mishra. He is the one whose dreams he saw back on Phyrexia. He isn't sure if he ever dreamed before that, but he knows the contact stopped once he left Phyrexia and came into this world.

Mishra was the one that stole the dragon engines, creatures of the first sphere. Gix came to this place expecting to kill him and take them back immediately but things have changed. There is another counterpart to Mishra. Called his brother in a way that differs from the way the monks refer to each other. Both Mishra and Urza's minds are more ordered than the barbarian minds. And each have a legacy of the Thran. Each has a stone that they have bonded with, and each stone has adapted to each bother.

Are they threats to Phyrexia?

Gix needs to know more. He removes information from the monk's mind and inserts new instructions. The monks are to infiltrate the ranks of each brother and observe. The time will come when they are to act, when Mishra will be punished for his crimes against the machines. When the stones will be his by right of conquest.

* * *

Gix in the Mix

So Gix shared dreams with Mishra, and now those are gone. They served to push Mishra on his path, and so I guess they are no longer needed, and now Gix can expand his role into influencing the war on both sides. Why Urza never shared initial dreams with Gix or another other Phyrexian, it doesn't seem like we'll ever know. But without the dreams to guide them, it's now obsession alone that drives each brother.